Well, good morning, everyone.

We are going to call the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners meeting to order.

We want to welcome you to the budget committee of the whole today.

The economic growth and community investment service team continues a series of presentations that focus on performance measures from each department.

Today we are excited to take a close look at measures related to areas like affordable housing, road maintenance, library utilization, and park and rec programs.

These performance measures are already available for review online in the open performance section of the county's open data quarter.

If you want more information about the performance measures presented today, check out the ECGI department dashboard, which stands for economic growth and community investment.

We have additional charts and background information.

With that, I would like to pass this over to the Deputy County Manager, Carrie Collins, to start the economic growth and community investment presentation.

Welcome.

Thank you, CCM Collins.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

Good morning to you all, to the commissioners here.

I'm pleased to kick off the economic growth and community investment performance measure budget presentations today.

But like my colleagues, I'll start with a moment of gratitude and thank the many people involved in this effort.

Thank you so much first to the board for setting the priorities, strategic priorities, vision, mission, and goals of the organization.

Thank you specifically to our administrative services director, Lorena DeWalt.

This is her first time through as our for all of the administrative services director and the directors, they've knocked it out of the park, so thank you so much.

Thank you to the planning administrative strategy team, to the budget team, to our EGCR leaders who have prepared the measures that you'll see today, to our county manager as well for her leadership and guidance.

The economic growth and community service team includes the assessor's office, community and economic development, libraries, parks and recreation, and public works.

As the county manager mentioned in the supplemental budget remarks, environmental health will transition to become a new environmental services department and join the service team in January of 27th.

The service team represents a cross-functional area within Ramsey County that plays a strategic role in the county's mission to build a vibrant, equitable, and prosperous community.

So why are we here today?

At its core, performance measurement is about asking a simple question are we making a difference in the lives of our residents?

This year, we started with Ramsey County Strategic Priorities and worked backward.

We asked what outcomes matter most to our community and how will we know if we are making progress.

The measures you'll see today are the results of years of work.

Our directors have spent significant time refining them, including past work with the Center for Economic Inclusion to ensure they are meaningful, measurable, and connected to our strategic priorities.

We intentionally selected a mix of measures.

Some look at community impact, some look at operational effectiveness, or organizational capacity.

But together, they help us move beyond simple simply counting what we do and instead asking whether our work is achieving the outcomes we intend.

But numbers alone do not tell the story.

The challenges facing our residents rarely fit neatly within one department, and neither do the solutions.

Housing, infrastructure, access to services, and economic opportunity all require collaboration across Ramsey County.

That is why these measures are not really about individual individual department success or failure.

They represent the work of one Ramsey County.

When we see progress, it is often because departments such as finance, HR, communications, the county attorney's office, and others are working alongside our service teams to deliver better outcomes for residents.

And ultimately, that is what these measures represent.

The everyday experiences of the people we serve.

They represent someone searching for a home they can afford, a family enjoying one of our parks, a resident searching for connection, information, or inspiration at our libraries, or simply the peace of mind that comes from knowing the roads and the infrastructure and services they rely on are there when they need them.

We cannot measure every part of the human experience, but these measures give us an opportunity to pause, look back, and ask whether we are meeting expectations and whether we are meeting them equitably across all of our communities.

As the county manager and others have stressed, these performance measures are one piece of a larger story.

Additional information that measures performance more comprehensively can be found on the open data portal through department annual reports, guiding plans such as the economic competitiveness and inclusion plan, climate equity action plan, or through initiatives like Building Stronger Together.

Collectively, these tools help us understand whether our investments are producing the results we want and where we may need to course correct.

And that work has not happened in isolation or without challenges.

This past year, our teams have continued to deliver core services while responding to emerging community needs, shifting priorities, significant organizational changes, and difficult budget conversations.

Through all of that, I've been incredibly proud of the resilience and commitment of the service team.

As we look ahead, we know there will be continue to be ongoing challenges, particularly around funding, legislative priorities, and the very real strain to maintain our facilities and infrastructure.

Today you will hear more about those challenges, but you'll also hear about opportunities.

You'll hear how these departments are rethinking investments, responding to community voice, building partnerships, and finding new ways to deliver services more effectively.

Some of these investments and/or services may need your advocacy at the legislature this session.

You'll hear about that as well as we go along here today.

Lastly, as we move into the next iteration of the economic inclusion and competitive competitiveness plan, we have an opportunity to not just look at what external variables may be holding our economy back, but we can look at an intentional look inward as an organization at how we do our work, where we invest, and how best to develop a next level plan that informs our greatest value document, our budget.

So thank you so much for this opportunity to have the conversation today.

And with that, I'll now ask Director Josh Olsen to kick us off with community and economic development.

Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today and to present on the community and economic development department.

I will do my best to refrain from our particular acronyms and other things, but I may drop into the inevitable piece of saying CED for our community economic development team or a few other things to describe our funding.

The community and economic development departments core functions support the development, maintenance of county uh affordable housing infrastructure, expand wealth creation and generation opportunities through home ownership, as well as uh affordable housing development, redevelop underutilized properties, support the remediation and cleanup of polluted lands, navigate economic development resources, and encouraging job growth.

While the portfolio of programming and projects is diverse, ranging from a housing program to redevelopment programming and projects to an emerging area of focus, which is our enhanced supports for small business and entrepreneurs, CEDs budget, and day-to-day operations continue to center around investing in affordable housing infrastructure.